Overview

Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress, Elsa. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share, while plotting her own sexual adventures with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. But the arrival of ...

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Overview

Endearing, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old Cécile is the very essence of untroubled amorality. Freed from the stifling constraints of boarding school, she joins her father—a handsome, still-young widower with a wandering eye—for a carefree, two-month summer vacation in a beautiful villa outside of Paris with his latest mistress, Elsa. Cécile cherishes the free-spirited moments she and her father share, while plotting her own sexual adventures with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. But the arrival of her late mother's best friend, Anne, intrudes upon a young girl's pleasures. And when a relationship begins to develop between the adults, Cécile and her lover set in motion a plan to keep them apart...with tragic, unexpected consequences.

The internationally beloved story of a precocious teenager's attempts to understand and control the world around her, Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is a beautifully composed, wonderfully ambiguous celebration of sexual liberation, at once sympathetic and powerfully unsparing.

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Chapter One

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

That summer, I was seventeen and perfectly happy. At that time "everybody else" was my father and his mistress, Elsa. I must explain this situation at once, or it might give a false impression. My father was forty, and had been a widower for fifteen years. He was young for his age, full of vitality and liveliness. When I left my convent school two years before and came to Paris to live with him, I soon realized that he was living with a woman. But I was slower in accepting the fact that his fancy changed every six months! But gradually his charm, my new easy life, and my own disposition, led me to fall in readily with his ways. He was a frivolous man, clever at business, always curious, quickly bored, and very attractive to women. It was easy for me to love him, for he was kind, generous, gay and fond of me. I cannot imagine a better or a more amusing companion. At the beginning of the summer I am concerned with now, he even asked me whether I would object to having Elsa along on our summer vacation. She was his mistress of the moment, a tall, red-headed girl, sensual and worldly, kindly, rather simple-minded, and unpretentious. One might have come across her any day in the studios and bars of the Champs-Elysées. I readilyconsented, for I knew his need of a woman, and I knew, too, that Elsa would not get in our way. Besides, my father and I were so delighted at the prospect of going away that I was in no mood to object to anything. He had rented a large white villa on the Mediterranean, for which we bad been longing since the spring. It was remote and beautiful, standing on a headland jutting over the sea, hidden from the road by pine woods. A goat path led down to a small, sunny cove where the sea lapped against rust-colored rocks.

The first days were dazzling. We spent hours on the beach giving ourselves up to the hot sun, gradually assuming a healthy golden tan — except for Elsa, whose skin reddened and peeled, causing her intense agony. My father performed all sorts of complicated exercises to reduce a rounding stomach unsuitable for a Don Juan. From dawn onward I was in the water. It was cool and transparent, and I plunged wildly about in my efforts to wash away the shadows and dust of Paris. I lay stretched out on the sand, took up a handful and let it run through my fingers in soft, yellow streams. I told myself that it ran out like time. It was an idle thought, and it was pleasant to have idle thoughts, for it was summer.

On the sixth day I saw Cyril for the first time. He was hugging the coast in a small sailboat and capsized in front of our cove. I had a wonderful time helping him to rescue his things, during which he told me his name, that he was studying law, and was spending his vacation with his mother in a neighboring villa. He had a typically Latin face — very dark and very frank. There was something responsible and protective about him which I liked at once. Usually I avoided college students, whom I considered brutal, wrapped up in themselves, particularly in their youth, in which they found material for drama, or an excuse for their own boredom. I did not care for young people; I much preferred my father's friends, men of forty, who spoke to me courteously and tenderly — treated me with the gentleness of a father — or a lover. But Cyril was different. He was tall and almost beautiful, with the kind of good looks that immediately inspires one with confidence. Although I did not share my father's intense aversion to ugliness — which often led us to associate with stupid people — I did feel vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of anyone completely devoid of physical charm. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somehow indecent. For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.

When Cyril left he offered to teach me to sail. I went up to dinner absorbed in my thoughts of him, and hardly spoke during the meal or noticed my father's nervousness. After dinner we stretched out in chairs on the terrace as usual. The sky was studded with stars. I gazed upward, vaguely hoping to see a sudden, exciting flash across the heavens, but it was early in July and too soon for shooting stars. On the terrace the crickets were chirping. There must have been thousands of them, drunk with heat and moonlight, pouring out their song all night long. I had been told they made the sound by rubbing their legs together, but I preferred to believe that it came from the throat, guttural, instinctive like the howls of cats in heat.

We were very comfortable. A few tiny grains of sand between my skin and my shirt kept me from dropping off to sleep. Suddenly my father coughed apologetically and sat up.

"Someone is coming to stay with us," he announced.

I shut my eyes in disappointment. We had been too happy; it just couldn't last!

Reading Group Guide

Plot SummaryUpon its U.S. publication in 1955, Bonjour Tristesse was an immediate international sensation, and one of the top selling books of that year. Its commercial success was partly due to its controversial portrayal of a privileged young woman with precocious attitudes toward love, sex, and morality. In fact, it was a jaw-dropping affront to the American values of the Eisenhower Era. No less sensational, perhaps, was the fact that its equally precocious eighteen-year-old author was barely an adult herself. Such cynicism, aggression, and world-weariness in a teenager -- and a young girl, at that -- were not just inappropriate, they were deeply unsettling. Nearly a half-century later, Cecile's casual friendliness with her father -- and her acceptance of his morally dubious social life -- may not be deemed healthy by child advocates, but it is hardly a stunning revelation. Sagan's depiction of Cecile as a pouting teenager and jaded ingenue is all too familiar in an age where "been there done that" seems to have replaced teenagers' respect for boundaries. Yet Bonjour Tristesse still appeals to the modern reader. Its impeccably crafted, artfully told tale continues to surprise. Sagan's moody voice is the perfect foil to the novel's glamorous setting. Her characters' languorous lifestyle belies the rage and angst simmering beneath the surface. And Cecile's wistful recollections of happier times lull readers into a state of rosy nostalgia -- even as she relates the bone-chilling details of her plot to undermine the adults who want to control her destiny. But perhaps the primary reason that this story resonates today is the truth it holds aboutchildren who grow up too quickly -- and about parents who never grow up at all. There is something heartbreakingly familiar about the combination of Cecile's insouciance and self-loathing and in her defense of her father's libertine ways. Left to her own devices, Cecile -- like most teenagers -- chooses play over hard work; indulgence over restraint; carelessness over responsibility. A more fortunate teenager would be guided by example. Yet Cecile's father's juvenile behavior is the only example she has. It is no wonder she will do anything to maintain the life set out for her by the only parent she knows. It is tragic that this struggle ultimately costs her the only true parent she has ever had.Nearly fifty years ago, readers of Bonjour Tristesse were shocked by Cecile's foray into the adult world of sex and deceit. But that is no longer solely the domain of adults, and we no longer find her behavior shocking. Instead we ache for this young woman who, too soon, finds herself in the grown-up world of disillusionment, regret and sadness. Topics for Discussion

Francoise Sagan was eighteen when she wrote Bonjour Tristesse; Cecile, her narrator, tells the story as a remembrance, a woman looking back on the summer of her seventeenth year. What do you think is the time span between that summer and the present? Does Cecile seem older than eighteen to you? If so, in what ways?

In explaining her attraction to Cyril, Cecile asks, "What are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured." Does Cecile's attraction to Cyril come from confidence or insecurity? What about her father's seductions of Elsa and Anne?

Cecile says to her father, "You're not the type of man to interest Anne. She's too intelligent and has too much self-respect." Yet Anne is interested. Why would such an intelligent and poised woman be attracted to a scamp like Raymond? What does Anne's attraction to him say about her?

Early in the novel, Cecile interrupts her narrative: "I realize that I have skipped over an important factor: the nearness of the sea with its incessant rhythm. Nor have I mentioned the four lime trees in the courtyard of my convent school and their perfume…" She goes on to list a number of detailed memories about life with her father. Why are these details important to her story? As you reread the entire passage, examine how Sagan flows from one image to another. What is the effect of this stream-of consciousness writing?

Not long after the above-mentioned passage, the four members of the household descend to the beach for the first time together. Cecile describes the "triangle" formed by the two women and her father, who is at the apex. She describes her father's "resolute stare" as he gazes at Anne and the way he plays with the sand. How do these detailed scenes compare with her less imagistic passages? What is the effect of the "rhythm" that Sagan establishes in the novel, alternating between one type of writing and another?

Does Cecile's hedonistic life with her father sound appealing to you? How do you think it resonated with readers in 1955? Do you find her relationship with her father shocking? Does it seem incestuous to you, as some critics have claimed?

Do you think Cecile's self-centered, careless approach to life and relationships was typical of other wealthy teenaged girls of her era? Do you find Cecile's cynical attitude toward love to be outrageous in this day and age? Can you name other female characters in literature who faced similar circumstances with the same kind of rebellion?

To Cecile, Anne is a savior and a threat. She is a protective mother figure with Cecile's best interest at heart, as well as a manipulator who wants to control her and her father and rob them of their happy lifestyle. How accurate is either portrayal? Do you think Cecile and her father would be happy living with Anne? Would Cecile end up enjoying the cultivated, ordered life that Anne would impose on her?

After she loses her virginity to Cyrile, Cecile returns to the villa to find Anne sunning herself outside. Cecile sits down and tries to light a cigarette, but her hands are shaking too hard to strike the match, so Anne does it for her. What does this scene reveal about Anne's personality and her feelings toward Cecile? Do you think Anne knew what had just happened to Cecile? Why does Cecile think this incident was "symbolic?"

Do you think Raymond really loves Anne, or is she, like Elsa, merely a diversion for him? Is she a challenging conquest whose allure would disappear as soon as she is conquered? Would their relationship have lasted? If Anne was the narrator of this story, how do you think she would describe Cecile?

By the end of the novel, do you feel sorry for Cecile? Given her upbringing, how responsible is she for her actions? Who do you think is responsible for Anne's death -- Cecile, Raymond, or Anne herself?

When Anne discovers Elsa and Raymond, she runs to leave the villa. Cecile begs her to stay, and asks Anne to forgive her. Just before she drives away, Anne places her hand on Cecile's cheek and says, "My poor child." What does Anne mean by this?

After Anne leaves, Cecile and Raymond each compose a letter to her, "two works of art, full of excuses, love and repentance." If Anne had not been killed, do you think those letters would have won her back?

What do Cecile's relationships with the other characters reveal about how she changes over the course of the novel? Does she grow more or less mature? More or less jaded?

Do you consider Bonjour Tristesse to be an example of feminist literature? Why or why not?

What do you think of the novel's opening paragraph? How does its meaning change after you have read the entire novel? What do you think Sagan means by the "complete egoism" of sorrow? About the Author: Born Francoise Quoirez in Cajarc, France in 1935, Francoise Sagan was only 18 when her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, was published. Sagan was one of the first celebrity writers for Cosmopolitan in the seventies, and is known to have lived quite a scandalous life in France, forming the group "La bande Sagan" with Juliette Greco. Sagan is also the author of Incidental Music, A Certain Smile, A Fleeting Sorrow, Lost Profile, and The Painted Lady, all of which are out of print in the United States.

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Customer Reviews

ItsSerene

Posted February 7, 2010

I Also Recommend:

enjoy!

could not put this book down, i wanted to know what happened next :)

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted February 13, 2010

What do you really want?

Cunning Cecile doesn't want a stepmother interfering in the relaxed, lovely life she shares with her widowed father.

Enough said: Read this fascinating story told in crisp prose.

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Anonymous

Posted July 8, 2005

delightfully dramatic with a dark twist

this book has simple beauty. well constructed characters-you get a sense that you can understand everyones point of view-but you don't know who to side with....and that's where the excitement lies. the translation could have been better adapted...but nonetheless the book's many underlying messages surface gracefully. its full of little aphorisms. Cecile's character is a very authentic portrayal of the naivity of youth and the consequences that such ignorance an bring. ----its a good summer read------

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Anonymous

Posted September 13, 2003

Delightfully Different

After Forced to read this book as a study material, i actually found myself wanting to read more as the story got more intense. It is hard to believe the different ways that the mind works and this book showed me the different extents to different personalities and different people. Start Reading

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